Exhibit Tackles Florida's `Moving' Issues

Florida FLASHBACK

Late in the 1920s, after the Florida land boom came crashing down, some disappointed folks thought the state's promise was as empty as their wallets.

Orlando's Carl Dann knew better, though.

"There is one simple reason why the future of Florida is an absolute fact," he wrote in 1929.

"If you go straight north from Central Florida, you will not go to New York City; you will go to Cleveland, Ohio," Dann said. New York is several hundred miles to the right; Chicago to the left" in a giant funnel shape, or V, with Florida at the bottom, Dann wrote.

In that funnel were a whole bunch of people, many of them only one night's drive from Central Florida.

It was a powerful vision. All those sunshine-hungry folks, just sitting in that big V. All we had to do is get them here, millions of them, rolling on wheels of steel or rubber or, eventually, riding through the air.

Now what do we do? That's the big question shaping the ambitious new exhibit at the Orange County Regional History Center on the history of transportation in Florida.

MORE THAN RETRO FUN

The exhibit "Are We There Yet?" debuted officially with a celebration Thursday, with Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty as guest speaker. It continues through mid-October, with programs and events scheduled each month.

That title has jolly reverberations of family road trips, perhaps to the beach or other vacation destinations, in which the perennial childhood question "Are we there yet?" bears warm associations, in memory at least.

But the exhibit's planners ask the question in a larger sense: Are we Central Floridians getting around like we want to be?

If you spend much time on Interstate 4, you're likely to agree things aren't exactly peachy.

Transportation is one of our region's pressing issues -- and we mean "issue" here as "a vital or unsettled matter," not in that daffy, euphemistic recent usage, as in "I have hangnail issues."

A central message of the exhibit is that transportation has always been an important part of Florida's growth and its problems, said Michael Perkins, the history center's director of exhibits.

In the beginning, as Perkins notes, it just wasn't easy to get here, period.

After the Civil War, when the exhibit begins, steamboats up the St. Johns offered the only way to reach Florida's interior.

When travelers docked, their choices were horseback, wagons, or feet slogging along sandy paths slashed through the palmettos.

In the 1880s, railroads offered the alternative that made a big change, followed by automobiles, of which there were only 300 in the entire state in 1906.

ROADS TAKE CENTER STAGE

And although "Are We There Yet?" includes interesting objects, images and information about trains, planes and more, it is the automobile and the roads we have created for it that ride on the exhibit's center stage.

It's a refreshingly candid picture, free of the "things are getting better and better in every way" perspective that used to dominate a lot of thinking about Florida's growth.

Some of the exhibit's words lay it on the line.

"The decision-makers built railroads, highways, and interstate superhighways to bring people to Florida, and they succeeded beyond anyone's imagination," the exhibit makers say. "As the cities along Interstate 4 threaten to merge into a megalopolis called `Orlampa' or `Tamplando,' Florida residents may ask whether they succeeded too well."

The story is far from over. We have choices, notes the history center's executive director, Sara Van Arsdel.

That's one of the lessons of history: We can see how people in the past made choices, and from our perch in time, we can see the consequences.

"We hope our guests will be able to better grasp the current issues facing us" as we look for solutions for the future, Van Arsdel says.